Ticketmaster Fiasco Excruciating for Taylor Swift

When pre-sales opened for Capital One credit cardholders, the site appeared to have managed to avoid major problems. The company’s inability and inability to handle Swift’s tour demand, as well as a shortage of tickets to meet additional demand, effectively ended Friday’s sale to the general population.

Fans blamed Ticketmaster, while other critics, including members of Congress, strongly criticized the company’s control over the live music industry.

“Ticketmaster’s dominance in the primary ticket market protects it from competitive pressures that usually push companies to innovate or improve their services,” Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in a letter to its CEO Wednesday. “It can lead to the kinds of severe service failures that we saw this week. Consumers are the ones who pay the price.”

Klobuchar’s worries were echoed by Senator Richard Blumenthal, who tweeted that the tour was “a perfect example of how Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger harms customers by creating a near monopoly.”

He stated that he had long asked the DOJ to investigate the situation in ticketing. “Consumers deserve better anti-hero behavior.”

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that the Justice Department launched an antitrust probe into Ticketmaster’s owner, Live Nation. The investigation will examine whether the company holds a monopoly on the market for concert tickets, as well as ticket buying. The investigation was first reported by the New York Times on Friday.

The Times reported that the Department of Justice had been reaching out to music venues and other participants in the ticket market over recent months. They wanted to know more about Live Nation’s practices, and how they are performing and added that it was also looking into industry dynamics.

CNN reached out to Live Nation and the Justice Department for no comment.

Swift is the new Trend for music industry

Swift’s immense popularity was also exposed by the backlash

Pop star, who has had many hits throughout her career, has built up a loyal following of fans (known as “Swifties”) and recently became the first artist to simultaneously claim all 10 top spots on the Billboard Hot 100 after the release of her new album, “Midnights,” last month.

The 52-seat Her Eras Tour, which starts in Glendale (Arizona) on March 17, and ends in Los Angeles on Aug 9, will be playing in 52 stadiums across the US.

Ticketmaster reported on Thursday that Swift’s upcoming tour saw more than 2 million tickets sold Tuesday — the highest number of tickets ever sold by an artist in a single day. The Eras Tour ticket demand was also twice as high as the 2022 top five tours and the Super Bowl combination.

“Based on the traffic to our site Taylor would have to perform almost 20x as many stadium shows as she currently does,” Ticketmaster stated on Thursday. “That’s 2.5 years of stadium shows every night.”

Tickets for Swift’s forthcoming tour were also selling at astronomical prices via ticket resale websites. Some tickets were listed for thousands of dollars.

Swift, who released her debut album in 2006 has become a cultural icon and has had a tremendous influence on industry issues. She has taken on music streaming services like Spotify (SPOT) and Apple Music regarding artist pay and Swift is a symbol of the music industry in many ways.

Serona Elton is a professor of the music industry at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. She further explained Swift’s popularity by pointing out her success in music sales as well as touring. She said that streaming music is the most popular way to listen to music, especially among younger people who tend to be more female.

She said, “The demographic that consumes the most music sees herself in her and closely correlates with what she sings about.”